Volume 20, Issue 1 (Mar 2015) of Juiced.GS, the longest-running Apple II publication in print, is now arriving in subscribers’ mailboxes. This issue features a guide to compiling cc65 code in Xcode on the Mac; the first chapter of a serialized Apple II mystery; a review of Assembly Lines: The Complete Book; instructions for using the GSport emulator on an AppleTalk network; a review of the Apple III emulator Apple3rtr; reflections on the Apple II community’s best years; and much, much more!

Open Apple #45 has been published. This month, we sit down with Mark Kriegsman, author of Star Blaster, and a modern Apple II hacker. He has ported the awesome FastLED driver library to the 6502, so you can drive many hundreds of 32-bit RGB LEDs with your Apple II.

Meanwhile, we browbeat people into attending KansasFest, we rationalize our shame at developing on emulators, we talk dead tree easter eggs, we make terrible awesome BASIC & Twitter puns, we talk about post-mortem collecting, and Mike generates hate mail. Just in case you’re not completely over movies about Steve Jobs, we talk about one of those as well. Yawn.
More importantly, help us convince Mark to build a lo-res display from FastLEDs and bring it to KansasFest.

Once again, in case you’ve been living under a rock and somehow missed it, the dates for KansasFest 2015 have been announced: July 14-19! Go to http://www.kansasfest.org to register, then pull up a comfy chair and enjoy this super-sized episode of Open Apple (yes folks, it’s another three-plus hour extravaganza… or marathon, depending on your perspective).

Apologies for some audio quality issues in this month. Quinn had equipment difficulties and Mike has been under the weather. Thanks for your patience. Stay tuned until the end of the show for a special treat (not just Mike’s usual cheeky outtake).

I’m excited to announce that “Assembly Lines: The Complete Book” is now available as a FREE PDF on Open Library and the Internet Archive. Thanks to Roger Wagner for releasing the book under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

Version 2.0.1 of ADTPro has been released. This version has a fix that is important for users with native RS-232 serial ports (though they’re getting more and more rare all the time). There’s also some help for our friends that are trying to tune their audio settings, and a few other bug fixes. Initial text bootstrapping is faster due to some
screen trickery and denser packing of data.

I’ve posted new updates to A2SERVER, A2CLOUD, and Raspple II. Biggest deal is compatibility with the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, which is much faster than previous Raspberry Pi’s. Go get one! Also, the GSport emulator is now installed on non-Raspberry Pi machines.

A2SERVER is a file server and network boot host for Apple IIgs and IIe computers. (It also works with classic Macs and modern computers, allowing you to share files on your network among all your computers.)

A2CLOUD provides a virtual hard disk, a floppy disk imaging server, and an internet access device for any Apple II. It also offers preconfigured Apple IIgs and IIe emulators.

Both A2SERVER and A2CLOUD are designed to be easy to use, and can be run on a Raspberry Pi, a premade virtual machine, or a Linux computer. If you have a Raspberry Pi, you can install Raspple II — a “suite” that includes both A2SERVER and A2CLOUD, plus David Schmenk’s Apple II Pi.

If you’re using Raspple II, you can update everything, including the Raspbian operating system, by typing ‘a2cloud-update os’. After it’s done, you can use the SD card in any Raspberry Pi, including A+ and 2B.

Heineman learned programming at age 16 and gained fame in 1980 as the first National Space Invaders Champion with a score of 165,200. Her career soon blossomed with credits in over 250 games including classics such as Tass Timesin Tonetown, Dragon Wars, Crystal Quest, The Bard’s Tale III: The Thief of Fate, Battle Chess, and Wolfenstein 3D. She developed numerous titles for the Apple IIgs, other contemporary platforms such as the Macintosh and Super Nintendo, and modern platforms such as the Xbox 360 and Playstation 4. She has founded or co-founded multiple game companies, including the venerable Interplay Entertainment, and worked for many more. Heineman continues to work in the game industry, and her company Olde Sküül recently announced a new RPG, Dragons of the Rip. She has not announced an Apple IIgs port.

KansasFest is an annual convention offering Apple II users and retrocomputing enthusiasts the opportunity to engage in beginner and technical sessions, programming contests, exhibition halls, and camaraderie. KansasFest was originally hosted by Resource Central and has been brought to you by the KFest committee since 1995. Any and all Apple II users, fans, and friends are invited to attend this year’s event. Registration details will be announced on the KansasFest Web site in April 2015. For photos, videos, and presentations from past KansasFests, please visit the event’s official Web site at http://www.kansasfest.org/.

Achievement Unlocked! ReactiveMicro and UltimateApple2 appear to have successfully cloned the Applied Engineering TranswarpGS! A2Central has been granted exclusive access to pictures of the prototype running self-diagnostics during a marathon burn-in session (at 16.5MHz), along with pics of the assembled prototype’s front and back. Within a week or so, prototypes will be shipped out to A2Central and Open-Apple Podcast for actual real-world testing and review!

THIS IS SO EXCITING but it’s just the beginning! Geoff Body is close to releasing the schematics for the TranswarpGS, and is working with Henry Courbis to develop updated firmware and features (like larger cache, faster performance or even a redesigned board using modern components). Dagen Brock is also helping out, so expect something fun on the software side later on.